JP2653064B2 - Remote computing device - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Industrial Application Field] The present invention relates to electronic mail, and provides a required service by receiving a mail including a service request sent from a user who is far from a remote place. Related to the device.

2. Description of the Related Art Recently, as the functions of facsimile machines and computers have become more sophisticated, they have begun to be actively used in the field of postal services. Generally, a system configured to perform a postal service using a computer or the like is called an electronic mail system. In an e-mail system using a computer or the like, a transmitting station inputs a letter from a terminal, puts the letter into a mailbox provided in the computer, and a receiving station copies the letter sent through a communication line. You can search and read from your own mailbox.

Also, as a general way to realize such a function,
A device (hereinafter referred to as a mail server) that has mailboxes assigned to each station and centrally manages them is installed in the e-mail system, and each terminal sends and receives mailboxes via this mail server. There was something to do.

"Problems to be Solved by the Invention" The above-described conventional e-mail system has the following problems.

(1) The mail server only has a function of transmitting a letter received from one station to another station, and does not perform intermediate processing according to the content of the received letter.

(2) For example, when a server for machine translation does not provide a service, the terminal of each station cannot issue a service request or cannot receive a service even if a service request is issued.

(3) When a plurality of services are received from a plurality of servers, it is necessary to issue a mailbox request corresponding to each service, which is troublesome for the user.

(4) If the type of server is different, the communication protocol used for communication with each server is often different, and it is necessary for the user to provide a terminal with a plurality of communication protocols required among them.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to provide a remote computer having the following functions to solve the problems (1) to (4) installed on an electronic mail system.

(A) The type of the service is checked once from the received letter and transmitted to the requester who has performed the necessary intermediate processing or the mailbox designated by the requester.

(B) The type of service is checked from the received letter to determine whether it is necessary to exchange mail with a plurality of mail services.

(C) Even when a plurality of services operate on the e-mail system, the user can receive the service by using a single communication protocol called e-mail.

"Means for Solving the Problem" According to the present invention, (a) a receiving means for receiving an electronic mail designating itself as a destination for performing a service process for adding a predetermined service, and (b) A storage unit for extracting a data body to be subjected to service processing from the e-mail received by the receiving unit and storing and storing the data body; Service processing means for determining the type of service to be processed from the additional information, and performing service processing required for the data body stored and held in the storage means based on the determination result; and (d) storing in the storage means When at least a part of the service processing of the data body that has been processed cannot be processed by its own service processing means, the data is transmitted to another transmission destination capable of processing the request and the service processing is requested. Service processing requesting means, (e) service processing result collecting means for collecting service processing results obtained by the service processing requesting means, and (f) service processing means or service obtained by the service processing result collecting means. The remote computer is provided with means for creating an e-mail to be transmitted using the processing result and transmitting the e-mail to the final destination.

Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in detail with reference to examples and modifications.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a main part of a remote computing device according to an embodiment of the present invention. Each component in the figure will be described. CPU (CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT) 11
A 32-bit central information processing device that controls the entire device. ROM (READ ONLY MEMORY) 12 is IPL (INITIAL PROG
RAM LOADER) and BIOS (BASIC INPUT OUTPUT SYSTE)
M), etc., which are used to perform system initialization processing at the time of system startup and input / output operations with the outside. RAM (RANDAM ACCESS MEMOR
Y) 13 is for storing and holding programs and data necessary for controlling the apparatus and mail to be transmitted and received.
The HDC (HARD DISK CONTROLER) 14 controls the hard disk 15 and extracts necessary programs and data from it.
The programs and data are read from the RAM 13 and stored in the hard disk 15. The hard disk 15 is an auxiliary storage device that stores a program for providing a user with a service unique to the present device. The Ethernet interface 16 connects the present device to an external Ethernet network, and includes a receiving circuit 17 and a transmitting circuit 18. The transceiver 19 is a splicer for physically splicing the device and the Ethernet network. The clock circuit 21 supplies a system clock to each unit in the apparatus. The system bus 22 is a 32-bit internal bus for transmitting information generated in each unit in the apparatus in a time-division manner.

Next, specific examples of various applications of the remote computing device having the above configuration to an actual communication system will be described.

(First Example) FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a configuration in a case where a remote computing device is applied to a Japanese-English machine translation device. First, each component in the figure will be briefly described. Network line 31
Is a line that connects the Japanese-to-English machine translation device 32, the service request device 33, and the mail server 34 to perform mail transmission. In the first example, an Ethernet using an optical cable is used. The Japanese-English machine translation device 32 is a device for machine-translating Japanese mail sent from the service request device 33, and includes a line interface 35, a storage device 36, and a Japanese-English machine translation mechanism 37.
Consists of The line interface 35 is an electrical connection between the network line 31 and the Japanese-English machine translation device 32, and includes a receiving circuit 38 and a transmitting circuit 39, through which mail is transmitted and received to and from the user. The receiving circuit 38 receives an e-mail addressed to itself from the network line 31. The transmission circuit 39 transmits a mail to the network line 31 by specifying a transmission destination. The storage device 36 extracts the data body from the mail received from the receiving circuit 38 and stores and stores the data. The Japanese-English machine translation mechanism 37 extracts data (Japanese sentences) stored in the storage device 36 and translates the data into English. The mail server 34 is a transmission relay device for mail flowing on the network line 31. The service requesting device 33 is a terminal on the user side.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing the operation of the Japanese-English machine translation device 32. Next, the operation will be described with reference to FIG. First, the user sends a Japanese mail from the service request device 33 to the Japanese-English machine translation device 32. The Japanese-to-English machine translator 32 checks in the receiving circuit 38 whether a mail addressed to itself has arrived (step). As a result, if an email addressed to itself has arrived, it is received (step). Storage device
36 extracts the Japanese sentence, which is the data itself, from the received Japanese mail and stores it (step).
Subsequently, the Japanese-English machine translation mechanism 37 extracts the Japanese sentence stored in the storage device 36 and translates it into English (step). The translated English text is added with additional information such as a destination section to create an English mail and send it to the transmission circuit 39 (step). In response to this, the transmission circuit 39 outputs an English mail to the service requesting device 33 on the network line 31 (step). Thus, the user can receive the translated text from the service requesting device 33.

(Second Example) FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing an example of a case where the remote computing device of the present invention is applied to a vector processing device. First, each component in the figure will be briefly described.
Vector processing device 41 is a workstation 42
It executes the required calculation processing at high speed in response to the calculation instruction mail sent from
43, a storage device 44 and a vector calculation mechanism 45. The vector calculation mechanism 45 executes a plurality of floating-point operations in parallel. Workstation 42
Is a computer on the user side and executes applications such as scientific calculation. The other components are the same as the corresponding portions in FIG. 1, and the description thereof will be omitted.

Next, the operation of this device will be described. First, the user sends a calculation instruction mail from the workstation 42 to the vector processing device 41. When the vector processing device 41 receives this by the receiving circuit 46, it extracts a mathematical expression which is a data part from the received calculation instruction mail and stores it in the storage device 44. Next, the vector calculation mechanism
45 takes out the mathematical expression stored in the storage device 44, calculates it at high speed, and sends the result to the transmission circuit 47. Transmission circuit 47
Receives the message, creates a mail addressed to the workstation 42, and outputs it on the network line 48. Thus, the calculation result can be received from the user workstation 42.

(Third Example) FIG. 5 is a block diagram showing an example in which a remote computer according to the present invention is applied to a machine translation device and a dictionary lookup device, and a document creation system is configured by combining them. First, each component in the figure will be briefly described.
The machine translation device 51 receives the sentence mail in the natural language sent from the document creation device 52, performs grammatical analysis of the sentence mail, and translates unknown words while checking the meaning thereof by the dictionary lookup device 53. Line interface 54,
It comprises a storage device 55 and a natural language grammar analysis mechanism 56. The dictionary lookup device 53 checks the meaning of a word in response to an inquiry from the machine translation device 51, and includes a line interface 57, a storage device 58, a dictionary lookup mechanism 59, and a dictionary database 60. The document creation device 52 is a user's word processor and creates sentences in Japanese, English, Chinese, Russian, and Sanskrit. The other components are the same as the corresponding portions in FIG. 2, and the description thereof will be omitted.

Next, the operation of this system will be described. First, the user creates sentences in various natural languages from the document creation device 52, and sends them as a document mail to the machine translation device 51.
When the machine translation device 51 receives this by the receiving circuit 61,
Documents in various natural languages, which are data portions, are extracted from the document mail received by the storage device 55 and stored. Subsequently, the natural language grammatical analysis mechanism 56 extracts a sentence in each main natural language stored in the storage device 55, and translates the sentence while performing grammatical analysis. When an unknown word is encountered in the process, the translation is performed while checking the meaning by inquiring the dictionary lookup device 53. Then, the translated text is sent to the transmission circuit 62. The transmission circuit 62 receives this and creates a translated mail addressed to the document creation device 52 and outputs it on the network line 63. On the other hand, in response to an inquiry from the machine translation device 51, the dictionary lookup device 53 checks the meaning of the requested word from its own dictionary database 60 for each language and sends it back to the machine translation device 51. Users are machine translation devices
The translated mail transmitted from the network 51 through the network line 63 can be received by the document creation device 52.

(Fourth Example) FIG. 6 is a block diagram showing an example of a case where a remote computing device according to the present invention is provided with two types of communication channels, thereby constituting a machine translation system which is connected to two types of networks. . First, each component in the figure will be briefly described. Machine translation device 71 is the first network line
It has a second communication channel 75 and a machine translator 76 which are coupled to a second network line 74 of a first communication channel 73 which is coupled to 72. Of these, the machine translation mechanism 76 is commonly used by both channels, and its function corresponds to the Japanese-English machine translation mechanism 37 in FIG. The other components are the same as the corresponding portions in FIG. 2, and the description thereof will be omitted. The operation of this system is essentially the same as that of the Japanese-English machine translation apparatus shown in FIG. 1, except that the two service requesting apparatuses are connected by different types of network lines. Is obvious, and the description is omitted.

Next, modified examples of the remote computing device including the secondary requesting device will be described with some examples.

(Fifth Example) FIG. 7 shows a Japanese-to-English machine translation system in which the remote computing device of the present invention is used as a general-purpose management device, and the externally-used machine translation device is used as a secondary request device. FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing an example of the above. First, each component in the figure will be briefly described. The general-purpose management device 81 receives the Japanese sentence mail sent from the service request device 82,
This is sent to a Japanese-to-English machine translator 83 to be translated into English and receives the translated English sentence. It is composed of a line interface 84, a storage device 85 and a secondary request device 86. The Japanese-to-English machine translation device 83 is a device that receives the Japanese sentence mail sent from the general-purpose management device 81, translates it into English, and sends it back to the general-purpose management device 81.
1. It comprises a storage means 92 and a Japanese-English machine translation mechanism 93. The other components are the same as the corresponding portions in FIG. 2, and the description thereof will be omitted.

FIG. 8 is a flowchart showing the operation of the general-purpose management device 81. Next, the operation will be described with reference to FIG. First, the user creates a Japanese sentence whose title starts with “Japanese / English:” from the service requesting device 82 and sends it to the general-purpose management device 81 as a sentence mail. The general-purpose management device 81 checks whether a mail addressed to itself has arrived in the receiving circuit 94 (step). As a result, if an email addressed to itself has arrived, it is received (step). The storage device 85 extracts a Japanese sentence, which is the data itself, from the received sentence mail and stores it (step). Subsequently, when the secondary requesting device 86 detects that the title of the received document mail starts with "Japanese-English:", it knows that the mail is a document to be translated into English (step). From this second request device
86 takes out the Japanese sentence stored in the storage device 85 and sends it to the Japanese-English machine translation device 83 for English translation (step). On the other hand, the Japanese-English machine translation device 83 is a general-purpose management device.
When the Japanese sentence sent from 81 is received, it is translated into English and the general-purpose management device 81 sends back the result. General-purpose management device
81 collects the sentence sent back (step). The translated English text is added with additional information such as a destination section to create an English mail and send it to the transmission circuit 95 (step). In response to this, the transmission circuit 95 outputs an English mail to the service requesting device 82 on the network line 96 (step). Thus, the user can receive the English translated mail sent from the general-purpose management device 81 via the network line 96 by the service request device 82.

(Sixth Example) FIG. 9 shows a Japanese-English system in which the remote computing device of the present invention is used as a general-purpose management device, and the external-use Japanese-English dictionary lookup device and the English-Japanese dictionary lookup device are used as secondary request devices. It is a block diagram showing an example of a / English-Japanese dictionary lookup device. The components in the figure are similar to those in the Japanese-English machine translation system of FIG. 7 except that there are two secondary request destination devices, and therefore the description thereof is omitted.

Next, the operation of this system will be described. First, the user requests the service request device 101 to change the title to “Japanese-English (1 line to 9
Line) "and" English-Japanese (line 10 to line 15) ", and prepares a document composed of both Japanese and English, and transmits this to the general-purpose management device 102 as a document mail. When this is received by 103, a sentence composed of both Japanese and English, which is a data part, is extracted from the document mail received by the storage device 104 and stored. Read the "Japanese-English (1-9 lines)" part to know that the 1--9 line part of this email is a document to be translated into English, and the title "English-Japanese (10-15 lines)" And read that the 10 to 15 line portion of this email is a document to be translated into Japanese.Therefore, the portion to be translated into English is read from the storage device 104 and sent to the Japanese-English dictionary lookup device 106 to be translated into English. The part to be translated into Japanese is read by the storage device 104. And sends it to the English-Japanese dictionary lookup device 107 for translation into Japanese.On the other hand, the Japanese-English dictionary lookup device 106 receives the Japanese sentence from the general-purpose management device 102 and translates it into English for general-purpose management of the result. When the English-Japanese dictionary lookup device 107 receives the English sentence sent from the general-purpose management device 102, it translates the sentence into Japanese and sends the result back to the general-purpose management device 102.
The general-purpose management device 102 sends the returned English sentence and Japanese sentence to the transmission circuit 108. In response to this, the transmission circuit 108 creates an English translation and a Japanese translation mail to the service requesting apparatus 101 and outputs it on the network line 111. The user can receive the English and Japanese translated mail sent from the general-purpose management device 102 via the network line 111 by the service requesting device 101.

(Seventh Example) Although UNIX systems are widely used in workstations and the like due to their flexible structure, the services of these systems can be used using the remote computer of the present invention.

FIG. 10 shows a system in which the remote computing device of the present invention is used as a general-purpose management device, which is connected to an external UNIX system via a public telephone line, and this UNIX system is used as a secondary request device. FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing an example of the above. Each component in the figure is a general-purpose management device 121.
7, except that it has a public telephone line interface 122, the description thereof is omitted.

Next, the operation of this system will be described. General-purpose management device 12
1 receives a UNIX command sequence sent from the service requesting device 124 by the receiving circuit 123,
Pass to 5. The secondary request device 125 receives this and sends a UNIX command sequence to the public telephone line interface 122. External U
When the NIX system 126 receives the command sequence sent through the public telephone line 127, it executes it and sends back the execution result again through the public telephone line 127. General-purpose management device 1
21 receives the result from the public telephone line interface 122 and passes it to the transmission circuit 128. The transmission circuit 128 receives this and creates an execution result mail and provides it to the service requesting device.

[Effects of the Invention] As described above, according to the present invention, the service processing means is provided in the remote computing device. Necessary service processing can be performed and provided to the user. The following effects can be expected.

1. The user can use the service regardless of the physical location, the type of computer used, and the software.

2. Users can receive services without adjusting their computer environment to the existing network environment.

3. Since the protocol is easy to standardize, service standards are standardized, and new servers can be easily registered without reconfiguring the protocol.

Further, if a secondary request for a service is made, a plurality of services can be received at the same time, so that the user can easily perform more advanced work.

Furthermore, the same contents as if all the remote computing devices themselves performed the service processing by simply sending an e-mail to the remote computing device of the present invention and specifying the destination of the e-mail after the service processing. Will be obtained by e-mail. Therefore, the requester of the service processing does not need to divide the request content into a plurality of devices and send it by e-mail, and when the person who needs the processing result is different from the requester of the service processing, Since the e-mail is sent directly to the person, the burden is greatly reduced. Also, unlike a case where a person who receives a service processing result by e-mail obtains a service processing result separately from a plurality of communication destinations, the service processing result can be collectively obtained from a remote computing device. There is also an effect that the burden can be reduced.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIGS. 1 to 10 are for explaining some embodiments and modifications of the present invention. FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a remote computer, and FIG. 2 is a remote computer. FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a case where the computing device is applied to a Japanese-to-English machine translator, FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing the operation of the Japanese-to-English machine translator, and FIG. 4 is an application of a remote computing device to a vector processing device. FIG. 5 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a document creation system in which the remote computing device is applied to a machine translation device and a dictionary lookup device, and these components are combined, and FIG. 6 is a block diagram showing two configurations. A block diagram showing the configuration of a machine translation system created by applying a remote computing device having a communication channel to a machine translation device and connecting it to two types of networks. FIG. To FIG. 8 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a Japanese-to-English machine translation system created by combining this with an external Japanese-to-English machine translation device. FIG. 8 is a flowchart showing the operation of a general-purpose management device. Is a block diagram showing the configuration of a Japanese-English / English-Japanese dictionary lookup system created by combining this with an external Japanese-English dictionary lookup device and an English-Japanese dictionary lookup device. FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a system applied to an apparatus and created by connecting the apparatus to an external UNIX system via a public telephone line. 35 ... line interface, 36 ... storage device, 37 ... Japanese-English machine translator, 38 ... receiver, 39 ... transmitter, 45 ... vector calculator, 56 ... natural language grammar analyzer, 59 …… Dictionary lookup mechanism, 76 …… Machine translation mechanism, 86 …… Secondary request device.

Claims (1)

(57) [Claims] 1. A receiving means for receiving, if there is an electronic mail designating itself as a destination for performing a service processing for adding a predetermined service, data to be subjected to service processing from the electronic mail received by the receiving means. A storage unit for extracting and storing the main body, and determining a type of service to be processed based on additional information such as a sender name and a title of a final destination included in the electronic mail, and determining the result of the determination. Service processing means for performing a required service processing on the data body stored and held in the storage means, and at least a part of the service processing of the data body stored in the storage means is performed by its own service processing means. A service processing requesting means for transmitting the request to another destination capable of processing when the processing cannot be performed, and requesting the service processing; Service processing result collecting means for collecting the result of the service processing obtained by the service requesting means; and e-mail to be transmitted based on the service processing result obtained by the service processing means or the service processing result collecting means and the additional information. Transmitting means for transmitting the result to the final destination.